Stainless steel products in form of a strand, i.e. in particular profiles, rods and tubes, are frequently produced by cold forming a semi-finished product, which is denoted as a billet in this disclosure, to form the actual strand.
In addition to a change in its dimensions, the billet during cold forming also experiences a strain-hardening.
As a result of the cold forming, the stainless steel strand therefore has properties which cannot be achieved by hot forming. In particular, strands with high tensile strength can be produced by cold forming, which cannot be achieved in other ways or are only difficult to achieve. On the other hand, the elongation of cold-formed strands made of stainless steel is rather low compared to strands produced by other forming methods.